Website Development | Custom Web Applilcations | HarrisWeb Creative

Helping clients find their message and bringing it to the world eloquently

Web Development Custom Applications

Website Development is the process of writing code to make a website behave in a certain manner. Or creating a custom application the serves a function on the web.

Web Development

Web Development in general extends the website design beyond its basic attributes. You may require web development to make a website do something unique or a custom function triggered by a button push or just by simply entering the page.

The paragraph is a simple example - lazy-loading an asset. Rendering a video as a percentage of screen size could be another example. Other simple examples are: tracking user engagement, setting variables and passing them on to Google Analytics.

More complex examples would be: developing a complete pay-on-demand training course that secures the course material so it cannot be shared across the web or an Uber-like system that connects passengers to drivers and collects fees.

Regardless of your needs, we are capable of making it happen.

Web Applications that are Useful Increase Traffic

Applications that are useful to your customers can increase engagement with your website.

We have developed applications that would determine the cost savings of moving to a high-effciency furnace and based on furnace age and seer rating, what the pay-back time would be. This application became one of the mainstays of the client's website.

Another application we developed showed a tutorial video, then a quiz, and based on grade, allowed the participant to continue to the next video or go back and review the material.

We spend time with you, up front, defining user behaviour so the code executes exactly as you wish. This minimizes code rewrites, saves time and money.

No Job Too Big or Too Small

If you require and complete application to serve a particular niche or just want a custom form to collect data, we can do both. Our code is mostly done in-house, and for those large enterprise web-applications, we belong to a group of fellow developers (code-monkeys) who support each other, which we can draw resources from.

Clean Code is Important

The importance of clean, well written and well documented code is imperative. Web developers move on, change careers, or simply disappear into the wilderness. It is important that your code can be easily deciphered by your next web developer. You may have grown to the point where you employ an in-house developer and he or she will need to work with code written before their tenure. We liberally comment and embed explanations within our code to make it easier for the next developer to understand how a function works, or even what it is doing. We have found this helpful for ourselves when coming back to a code that was developed years previously. Some developers even purposely write badly documented code to make it difficult for other programmers to do updates. We do not believe in this practice we view code you paid for as yours, with no strings attached. Your in-house team should find the code we wrote for you a pleasure to work with.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Today about 25% of all websites run on WordPress, according to a Marketing Land Article, which goes on to quote statistics, showing that about 40% of all websites use some form of content management system. These systems make it easy to get a website up and running but necessarily are geared to "middle of the road" applications and behaviours. Website development often involves working within these CMS frameworks to develop a unique experience you want for your users. We are experienced in creating designs and code that extends into the unique, off the beaten path, while working inside a CMS framework.

Basic Skills

Markup Code

All developers require an understanding of some basic programming languages starting with HTML and CSS. These two markup languages bring text and images to web pages in a consistent style. The current standard is HTML5 and CSS3. We have been writing code in these languages since 1999.

Browser Manipulation

JavaScript is the language that most browsers work on today; it is important because it allows for creation of custom a user experience on your web pages. There are many libraries and derivatives of javaScript, like JQuery and Json, that focus on specialized javaScript functions to perform a unique set of tasks. We are experienced in writing javaScript code and making use of these libraries.
These 3 forgoing languages comprise what search engines see when their robots traverse your website.

Server-side Preprocessing

PHP, a server-side language that resides on your web server and executes before your web pages are rendered in a browser; as such, is not "seen" by search engine robots, but the results of its execution are. PHP is also very good at communicating with databases where information is stored. PHP can allow for such functions as user logins, retrieving stored user data previously saved, requesting user input or gathering user information and rending different experiences to users based on that information, like geographic location. A simple example of this is:

Your current IP address is: 54.82.97.27

Which suggests you are in: Ashburn, Virginia, United States

Your browser language code is currently set to:

This location data is pulled from a free web service, and as such is somewhat accurate and operational most of the time. For marketing purposes paid services are better. That being said it can be seen how this data can help to offer tailored experiences to different visitors.

Web Application Example Portfolio

This simple quiz uses only javaScript. Tests to see if you answered all the question, tallies your score and displays the correct answers upon submit

Don Quixote is a 1955 sketch by Pablo Picasso of the Spanish literary hero and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. It was featured on the August 18–24 issue of the French weekly journal Les Lettres Françaises in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the first part of Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

Free Responsive Slider Download

Download ZIP file here

The HarrisWeb Simple Responsive Slider is just as it states, a very light-weight, less than 250 lines including documentation, slider with many options. It is also responsive if you set the width using a percent.
OPTIONS INCLUDE:

width in percent or pixels

height in pixels

show or hide the following:

prev/next arrows

border

title

slide title

slide description

choose to cover slide with image or contain whole image within the slide body

choose the position of the slide image within the slide body top, bottom, center, left, right, center

choose to auto-start or not

choose fade-in and fade-out speeds

choose auto-start time between slides

HarrisWeb YouTube Search & Play in Web Page App

Click image below to see app full screen

Free Responsive YouTube Search and Play App

The HarrisWeb YouTube Search & Play in Web Page app uses the YouTube API to search YT & display thumbs in click-to-play list that opens the video in the Fancybox plugin in a web page. The application is free to use and modify, simply leave the link to www.harrisweb.ca intact.